Netbooks - Advice wanted

[JasCal]

Her who must be indoors has asked for a netbook for his birthday. She emailed a link to the Netbooks page on the Tesco site with a request for one of these. (A team mate in my footy team is the manager of the local superstore - very kind with sharing his staff discount).

Can I ask what is the difference between a netbook and a laptop?

Would it be better to go for a laptop?

 

[kjacko]

Netbooks are for girlies, that want to be able to use facebook and surf the web whilst sitting watching x-factor.

They usually run on Atom cpu's which are great for mundane web-surfing. Not for any kind or labour intensive applications. They run on cut-down versions of whatever operating system is installed; win 7 homestarter, Linux.
They tend to go from 7" up to 12" screens, so are quite a bit smaller than traditional notebooks/laptops. Battery power is pretty good on them.

Most netbooks DON'T come with a cd/dvd drive, so you need to consider that if you intend on loading applications or even music onto it from disk. Some don't even have a network adaptor, but ALL come with wifi built-in.

Laptops are, well, what you expect when you picture a laptop. They are portable workstation with far more power and versatility (mostly) than any netbook. These are what you need if you want to actually 'work' on it.

Hope that helps somewhat.

 

[LooPrEvil]

Basically Netbooks are mainly for surfing the net and for accessing software and filing documents on the internet. They can save on having to buy Microsoft software etc, as it is intended that you use other parties software direct from the internet. Although as pointed out they do not come with CD / DVD drives, if your Netbook has sufficent capacity you can purchase a 'KEY' from the likes of PC World, which gives you a unique code that can be used to allow you to download MS Office etc onto your machine.

A Laptop is a portable equivelent of your Desktop, with CD/DVD drives etc, more computing power and storage capacity etc.

Lou.

 

[JasCal]

Thanks for that.

It will be used 90% of the time for the farm game on facebook. I can't see it being used for anything more demanding than that.

 

[LooPrEvil]

Thanks for that.

It will be used 90% of the time for the farm game on facebook. I can't see it being used for anything more demanding than that.

Then the netbook is a suitable solution for you Jascal, and save you a few £. My sister-in-law bought three netbooks for her kids at Christmas. She got the HP Mini 110 3107 from PC World. Because she was buying 3 of them they also bundled in a MS Office 3 user licence key and Norton 360 security 3 user licence key.

I downloaded the softwares for her and must say they seemed decent little machines.

Personally I prefer a hardwired internet connection, but appreciate Wifi has its benefits particulary if portability is a requirement.

Let us know what you opt for JasCal. Thanks.

Lou.

 

[tapir]

We picked up an Acer Aspire 523h purely for browsing online in the lounge. obviously, it's not an all singing all dancing machine, not at that price.

It IS fine for normal web use, you can adapt to the smaller keyboard if you have to spend any amount of time typing. I doubled the RAM (to 2Gb) and also run Visual Studio on it with out any problems when I add an 8Gb USB pendrive and extend the netbooks memory via Readyboost.

It's also small enough to pack in my camera bag so that I can download from my camera to it, and takes up little space whenever I go abroad.

 

[daozen]

... They run on cut-down versions of whatever operating system is installed; win 7 homestarter, Linux.

Just for info I'm running a full version of Linux Mint on my netbook no problems at all. It'd probably run a full version of windows as well if microsoft allowed it.

 

[empip]

Easily fits the tourist seat back grub trough on aircraft - SIA for example, have sockets for leccy supply. Listen to own music, play with pix off camera, watch own movies from HDD, listen to book reading, do a bit of this and a bit of that - whoopie 14 hr flight ends having endured little boredom. Taken my little 2 gigger to USA, Oz even 'kin Borneo... I am happy with its easy carriage and usability.

-0-

 

[gman76]

I was under the impression that my GF's Acer Aspire netbook is running a full version of XP home - is that not the case?

 

[lymmranger]

My netbook (HP something) happily runs on XPpro and has Office 2010 too

it is bloody fast

but at my age the screen can cause a few issues when trying to read emails (should really try and find a specsavers)

 

[EFCLee1]

I installed Windows 7 to a AcerAspireOne and even with AV installed was pretty nifty for its size

Couldn't imaging getting used to it though screen res far too small would be scrolling on every webpage

 

[khamill]

netbook are great little tools man

Some as powerful if not more powerful than normal laptops... ie Ram hdd size proc etc!

if advise was to be given though, and you werent to stuck on the idea of the smaller netbook, i would defs go for a laptop, due to maintenance, upgrading issues.

But if you are going for a netbook, I would say the biggest dropback is the touchpad (mousepad0 can be a tad erratic on a lot of the systems.

but you can really do anything you can do on any normal system mate

good Luck